


The Barnyard Treasure

by vanillafluffy



Category: The Three Investigators | Die drei ??? - Various Authors, The Trixie Belden Mysteries - Julie Campbell Tatham & Kathryn Kenny
Genre: Aging, F/M, Family History, Gen, Treasure Hunting, Vietnam War, buried treasure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25317799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillafluffy/pseuds/vanillafluffy
Summary: Trixie and Jupiter are on a mission to recover a cache of money hidden by their friend's elderly uncle--who can't remember where he buried it fifty years ago.
Relationships: Trixie Belden/Jupiter Jones | Justus Jonas
Comments: 3
Kudos: 5





	The Barnyard Treasure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brumeier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/gifts).



“It’s so heavy!” Trixie moans, resting the dish of the metal detector on the ground for a moment as she catches her breath.

“I know, I know,” Jupe sighs. “And I’m tired of digging up everything but the treasure! A bunch of old bed-springs, a broken garden fork and eight tin cans…it’s a good thing we’re current on our tetanus shots.”

Chickens squabble nearby, scratching at the newly turned earth. Not far off, a goat bleats. They’ve spend three hours searching the barnyard of Malachi’s farm in search of what Malachi’s aging uncle described as his lost fortune. He needs it now, he says, to prepay his final expenses. 

“He’s seventy,” Malachi informs them lugubriously. “I hate to think of what that makes me.”

His Uncle Nick remembers burying his saved bankroll before leaving the old homestead to serve in Vietnam--but after so many years, he’s a bit hazy about where, exactly, he’d planted it. 

‘Along one side of the pigpen’ doesn’t help, because the boundaries have changed of the years, and neither brother recalls exactly where that corner had been in far-off 1970. Stumped, but game to keep on hunting, Malachi called Jupe. 

There remains an acre between the barn and the orchard…. Jupe eyes Trixie. You grew up on a farm,” he prompts. “Where do you think the corner of the pig pen would be?”

“Trixie frowns. “Depends on how many pigs they had…”Hey, Malachi! She calls. “How many pigs did you guys have?”

“One cranky old boar, a few sows dropping a litter ever year…twenty, maybe. Lots of mouths to feed in the house, but there was always a side of bacon or sausages put by. And of course, Mama canned what we grew in the garden.”

Trixie nods absently. She knows all about canning produce. The pig-pen is her focus now. “You’d want at least one corner to get shade from the trees,” she muses under her breath, then asks clearly, “Where was the watering trough?” 

“We had a deep well piped…” Malachi comes slowly toward them from the side of the barn where he’s been watching their labors. “Had to cap it off in the 90’s, when the drought started. I was afraid somebody might fall down there, so I laid a flat piece of tin across it and covered it with topsoil. You could find it with your gizmo, I’ll bet. It oughta light up like a Christmas Tree!”

Jupe chuckles. “A logical spot to triangulate from.” he allows. 

Trixie moves purposefully toward the tree-line, trying where it might have cast its shade so long before. “There were move trees here, weren’t there?”

“Let’s just say I’ll never run out of apple-wood for smoking,” their friend shrugs. “You’ve seen my woodpile. Yeah, the orchard came a lot closer to the barn then!” He shakes his grizzled head. “Little by little…it’s my only asset. Just a mess of old trees I have no way to do anything with but pick what’s fruitful and cull what’s past bearing…no way to replant---I don’t reckon tree farming is my so-called second act.”

“The feed trough was against that side of the barn.” Malachi draws a line from the door in the side of the barn, Trixie surmises. To the well-head. To the tree-line…she walks to a spot parallel to the door in the barn. 

“You can tell it was greener around here. This area…” She indicates the greener swathe, which lines up with the presumed line toward the compares its greenness to its neighbors. She tries to keep one eye on the ground for any changes in terrain. “I can see the line of stump-holes! Hmm, this feels line an old treeline. We lost some of our crab-apples during a hurricane one autumn. Some of them were uprooted, others were sheared off…did you have a mudslide through here?”

“That’s right--how did I forget? In those days, Daddy had the pigs penned up in the orchard.” Malachi grins sheepishly. “He’d move the pig pen every few years, said their droppings would enrich the soil. Behind the barn was where Mama had her garden after he moved the pigs up the hill to the orchard…I spent enough time hoeing it.”

“Line up with the right side of that door frame,” she urges. “I’m guessing the pig-pen shifted over the years to redistribute the manure. It would’ve been great for the orchard, and if the pigs got a few windfall apples, they’d be that much juicier.”

“Trixie, it’s too bad you’re with that city boy,” Malachi wheedles, with a sidelong glance toward Jupiter. “You could marry me and get back to farming. That way you’d have apples _and_ oranges!”

Refusing to be baited, she just grins. “We’ll find Nick’s treasure,” she promises impulsively. “I think we’re on the right track!”

“Here. I’ll take over,” Jupe says, relieving Trixie of the apparatus. “You look like a boiled lobster. Let’s see, line up from here to where?”

Even sun-screen and a hat isn’t going to keep her nose from peeling. “Sweet talker, you really know how to charm a girl---” She breaks off as the metal detector whines shrilly. It’s much stronger than most of the feeble chirps the junk out behind the barn sounded. 

“ I wonder what it is this time?” She’s not quivering with curiosity, Oh, who is she kidding! Sure she is, even after the disappointments earlier.

“Hub-cap from a Model T-? Frying pan used by the Donner Party? A stray cannonball from the War of 1812--take your pick.” Jupe matches her unenthusiastic tone and waves the device over the ground.” He’s cut more stakes. “Between here and here.” He gets busy with the shovel. 

The late spring sun hints at summer to come. Trixie can’t help admire her man’s bronzed, muscular physique as he loosen the soil between the two stakes. Unlike her, Jupe never seems to burn, the lucky duck, 

“Wait, I see something!” Trixie exclaims after a couple minutes. She reaches into the hole, exploring with her fingers. “It’s something mostly curved metal,” she reports excitedly. “Maybe it _is_ the hub-cap from a Model T, wouldn’t that be funny?”

Listening to her mother talking about excavating in her archaeology classes, Trixie’s brought some digging implements--a small garden shovel, a hoe and a trowel, tools she uses in her back garden at home in Rocky Beach. “I’ll see what this is,” she tells her partner. “Keep going toward the door and see if you can find the old well--it should be between here and the side of the barn.”

Whatever they’ve uncovered, it likes it down there. The earth has hardened around it during the recent dry decades; it takes effort to widen the hole around the sides…the shape is like a big tin can on its side…something is protruding from the side…It has a handle.

Trixie frowns. Growing up on a farm, she recognizes what it is now--an old milk can. Not what she’d pictured when Malachi had mentioned ‘a milk jug’. This is a two-and-a-half foot-tall tall steel milk can, buried length-wise in the baked earth. Something like this…she smiles fondly, remembering how she and her brothers had stashed unapproved music, passed around among the siblings, artists on thier mom’s ”naughty” list…behind the loose board in the upstairs coat closet. As hiding places go, a milk can buried according to whatever landmarks Nick had used…that’s pretty good.

“Jupe!” He sets a stake at his current position along their line and lopes toward her. 

She displays the shallow trench and he reaches for the shovel. “Hmm…while I appreciate your wish to delve cautiously, I think this is going to require a more direct approach.”

Trixie watches, admiring Jupe’s muscles as he digs. The big spade he wields makes short work of enlarging the sides of the hole so he can loosen the lower portion of the can. He reaches into the hole, struggling to budge the old milk can. “It’s really in there!” he grunts, straining.

“Let me dig!” she pleads. “Please!”

He defers the shovel to her with a grin. “Yes, ma’am! If you get it loose enough for me to rock it, maybe I can get it up in one piece. No telling how rusted it is after this long.” To Malachi-- “You think that’s it?”

“This is it!” Trixie says confidently. “Get pictures! I want Moms to see this!” She chuckles. “It’s like digging up a time capsule! 1970 is the year she was born! The only time I’ve seen milk cans like this before was being used as umbrella stands!”

“Nick was in charge of the pigs and cows. He knew every foot of pasture and fence-line.” Malachi absently runs his fingers through his flyaway white hair. “And I know how he would’ve found it if he’d come right back. There was a spot, it was right here where we’re standing…he whittled on a few old fence posts. I reckon where you’re digging, that’s just the other side of where those posts were.”

“Sure,” Trixie says, glancing toward the roof of the house, just visible above the remaining trees. “Looking at those trees, even now, they couldn’t have seen him from the house. A way to have some private time when you’ve got people bossing you around all day, but he could say he was checking the pen, and who’d fault him?”

Systematically, she excavates the curve of the can on what she thinks of as the left side of it. The end of the can with the ‘hub-cap’ is pointed toward the barn.

Jupe’s phone shows her straddling the hole, the can about halfway exposed on that side. “Get the other side,” he suggests. “If you can get that side to where the can curves under, I’ll see if I can get it to budge.”

After a few minutes, they trade places, Trixie taking over filming duties while Jupe crouches over the excavation. He’s so strong, she marvels, watching his muscles ripple as he tries to work the can loose.

“You’ve got it, it’s moving!”

“It’s damned heavy--” Jupe huffs, but he’s got one hand under the neck of the milk can, and it’s beginning to slant up toward the lip of the hole.

The edge of the trench gives way, and he loses his balance. Jupe ends up sprawled on his back, feet in the hole, the rusted container coming to rest against the crotch of his jeans. “Ow!” he exclaims, a half-an-octave higher than his usual tones. Trixie winces.

“It’s certainly something!” Jupe rights the vessel and climbs to his feet. “Whatever is in there is pretty heavy. It may be so rusted that mud got into it and hardened. And it feels to me that that end with the cap is lighter than the base. Is there a wheelbarrow or hand-wagon we could haul it to the house in?” 

“I was expecting something a lot smaller,” Trixie admits, studying the can. “A cash-box with a roll of bills. Not that! This makes more sense. You probably didn’t have an inventory of milk cans,” she surmises, glancing at Malachi. “And a shallow hole like this wouldn’t be that hard for one person, and it wouldn’t call attention to itself, not with the ground churned up by pigs throughout the pen.”

“Uncle Nick, he said it was everything he’d managed to save, and a few keepsakes. Course, when he said a milk jug, I figured he meant an old stone crock from the dairy. He had a bank like that for the longest time.” Malachi sighs. “Course, he was drunk as a boiled owl that last night--it was right before he was going to ship out--depending how late he left burying it…no telling what’s in there besides the money.” He gazes toward the barn, lost in thought. “Knowing him, he had that can tucked away somewhere for a while, filling it with…his youth, I reckon. He was that kind, he liked having something set aside. Fifty years later, it’s treasure. He’s counting on a thousand dollars to prepay is final affairs.”

“There’s no point in opening it here,” Trixie says, taking off her heat and fanning her face. “I need a cold drink!”

Jupe concurs. “The thing to do is go inside, drink some lemonade and open this thing properly. This is like a time capsule--we should get proper pictures.” 

Trixie remembers seeing a primitive dolly among the cast-offs out behind the barn. They regroup around Malachi’s kitchen table.

The can rests on an old rag rug. Jupe has procured a can of penetrating oil from his truck’s toolbox. He applies lubrication to the seam between the lid of the can and its base and gives it a few taps with a hammer.

“I’m being careful,” he says when Trixie protests. “I have no desire to further complicate matters by knocking the lid out of round. That would only prolong the suspense of investigating the contents--so I’m hitting it with just sufficient force to loosen the rust and encourage penetration of the oil. I confess, I’m curious as to what may be revealed.”

Trixie hides a grin. Jupe’s vocabulary tends to get more voluble the more excited he is--the prospect of finding Uncle Nick’s buried treasure clearly sparks his imagination.

“You don’t know what there is, besides money?” she asks Malachi. 

He shakes his head. “Uncle Nick couldn’t recall. After all, it was fifty years ago he buried it. Keepsakes, he said.”

“Did he have a rock collection?” Jupe inquires wryly, tapping the old can with finesse.

“No…after he left, I seem to remember there were a few things that weren’t in his room,” Malachi’s worn face crinkles in a smile. “He had a few girlie magazines, one of ‘em had Marilyn Monroe. I went looking, and I couldn’t find Marilyn anywhere.”

“It promises to be a fascinating psychological portrait,” Jupiter muses. “By 1970, the Vietnam war was the most divisive issue in America. There were massive youth protests, because, of course, they were the ones being expected to fight.”

“We didn’t hold with that!” Malachi says firmly. “We had men in our family in Korea and the Pacific before us. I had an Uncle Johnny who didn’t make it back from Italy. Nick--Nick was the baby of his generation and my daddy was the oldest. There was just four years between us, we grew up more like I was his kid brother. I missed him something rotten after he left, but we were raised that serving when your country asked you to was your sacred duty.”

“He survived the war, but never came back here,” Jupe probes, using a chisel to try to pry the cap up.

“He said he couldn’t stand to be on the farm. That after the Green Hell--that’s what he called it, the Green Hell--he didn’t feel safe here anymore. That’s how he ended up in New Mexico. He said it was mostly brown, so it didn’t trigger him so bad.”

“But you’re still in touch,” Trixie points out, because Malachi has been looking sadder and sadder. “That’s something.”

Jupe emits an involuntary gasp as the lid lifts perceptibly. The others watch as he continues his careful tapping, rotating the can so he can try to raise the lid on the other side. Then he applies more penetrating oil to the junction of the cap and the base. 

He’s so patient, Trixie marvels. By now, I would’ve reached for a hacksaw!

After a few minutes, the lid has come up enough that Jupe can attempt to pull it off manually. 

“What’s that?” The topmost item is red, and Trixie has to refrain from grabbing it.

“Picture first,” Jupe says calmly, wiping his fingers on a kitchen towel. “We want to document this, remember? Okay, Malachi.”

Their friend reaches into the milk can and tugs on the scarlet mass. When it emerges, it proves to be a red and white leather jacket.

“Nick’s varsity jacket!” Malachi touches the faded felt patch. “He was second base for the Cedar Hill Monarchs, and his batting average in his senior year was 375!”

He offers it to Trixie, who studies it closely. "It could use a good saddle-soaping," she assesses it. "But it's still intact."

Jupe has his camera out, recording the reminisces. “Preserving his achievements,” he murmurs.

As Trixie unfolds it and holds the back up to the camera, he scans the embroidered “Monarchs” across the shoulders, with a pair of crowns and crossed scepters below. “That deserves a shadow-box,” she sighs, nostalgic for her own B.W.G. jacket, under glass in their living room. Then she flips it to show the front, where Praether is stitched in fancy script over the left breast.

“Reckon I’l ask him if he wants me to send it on…I hear it gets pretty nippy there in New Mexico in the winter.”

“What else have we got, Trixie?” Jupe prompts.

The jacket hadn’t been crammed in there; it took up the top half of the can. For contents beyond that, Trixie has to reach in deep to find their next prize. “It feels like cloth….” She pulls up a wad of flowered cotton.

“A flour sack!” she and Malachi exclaim at once.

“What’s in it?” Jupe inquires, camera at the ready.

Trixie peers inside. “I think we just found Marilyn Monroe…and some old comic books…and a Bible.”

“Nick got that Bible in sixth grade for perfect attendance. And--our Tarzan comics! We had a whole stack of them, back in the day. I guess he knew I wasn’t gonna be the kid any more. I had to grow up a lot after he left. I didn’t have time for comic books, that’s for sure.” 

Lost in his long ago youth, he gestures toward the orchard. “We used to go into the woods and play Tarzan whenever we didn’t have chores. Or we’d pretend that the cows were gazelles or giraffes, and the pigs were hippos in the mud…” Malachi shakes his head. “Too bad the real jungle wasn’t so entertaining. You go ahead, Trixie. We still haven’t found Nick’s money.”

There’s something pillow-soft, with something else hard and dense inside. Trixie extracts it with some effort and sets a rolled up patchwork quilt on the battered table.

“That’s Nick’s baby quilt! Our mee-maw made ‘em for all us kids--and grandkids, til she passed. Even when we outgrew our cribs, we took ‘em everywhere--on picnics and car trips and out to watch stars on the hill---” Malachi grabs the dish towel, blowing his nose vigorously. “What is it?”

Trixie carefully frees the contents without damaging the old quilt--a one-quart Ball canning jar heavy with coins. “That’s like the milk can,” she says, nodding. “Nobody would miss just one canning jar.”

Malachi’s face falls. “You might could build a plain pine box for that, if you got the lumber cheap and did the work yourself,” he says mournfully. “A jar full of loose change! I’m so sorry I wasted your time for that.”

“It’s fifty years old,” Jupe points out. “There might be some rare coins in there. I can call my buddy Earl, he works as a coin dealer.”

Grabbing a pan from the draining rack, Trixie sets it on the table. “Let’s count it up and see if anything looks interesting,” she suggests, trying to wrench the top off. It doesn’t budge.

Jupiter takes it from her, twists forcefully and hands it back to her.

She smiles and pours the contents onto the pan. “Aha!”

A roll of bills spills out with the coins. The rubber bands crumble at her touch. “These bills don’t look right,” she says, peering at them. 

“They made the pictures of the Presidents bigger back in the…” Malachi frowns with concentration. “Late Eighties or early ‘Nineties, I think it was. You two probably don’t remember that far back.”

“Three hundred twenty-seven dollars!” Trixie announces after diligently rifling through the bills. “That certainly helps.”

“Take a look at the silver coins, Jupe tells her, tension in his voice. “Is there a ring of copper around the sides? Silver coins minted before 1965 were solid silver.”

“Yes!” Trixie is sorting the coins by denomination. “Eight silver dollars! Some Kennedy half-dollars. Oh gosh, some of these dimes are Mercury dimes! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many of them at one time in my life.”

“Of course not!” Malachi is looking a lot more cheerful. “Roosevelt’s been on dimes since I was in diapers. Do you know why?”

Trixie shakes her head. Jupe holds the camera steady, capturing the moment.

“Maybe you know that FDR had polio…course, I don’t expect that either of you has ever seen a case of polio. But he was left with limited mobility, and he was far from the only one. Polio used to kill or cripple a lot of folks. The March of Dimes was the foundation FDR founded to fund research for a cure--”

“Jonas Salk,” Jupe contributes. “He came up with a vaccine in the Fifties and polio has been virtually eliminated.”

“Sure enough. Anyway, as I recall, even though times were tough in the Thirties, people could usually spare a couple dimes…because everybody knew polio was something that could happen to them, or someone they loved. There were rallies for the March of Dimes for years, and after Mr. Roosevelt died, everyone agreed it was fitting that his image should be on our dimes, and it is to this day.”

“This is weird…I thought it was a dime, but it’s a penny.” Trixie peers at the coins she’s uncovered.

Jupe nearly drops the camera. “1943?”

“That’s right. How did you know?”

His face splits in a broad grin. “I’ve heard of them. They made steel pennies during the war to try to save copper for essential industries. It only lasted one year, though, because people kept thinking they were dimes. And, because they were attracted to magnets, they got stuck in some vending machines--they had penny vending machines, if you can believe it, and some people tried to cheat them with blank slugs. They put magnets in to catch the slugs, but it also caught the legit pennies. They changed to a different alloy the next year.”

“Knowledgeable, ain’t he?” Malachi comments in an aside to Trixie.

“He sure is!” There’s a note of pride in Trixie’s voice. “It’s a good thing we looked at these instead of just taking them at face value. If it’s rare, it must be worth something!”

Malachi reaches out and stirs the puddle of brown coppers on the tabletop. “Wheat-ear pennies, of course. They were in circulation til 1959, if my memory serves me. And a few Indian head pennies--they stopped making those before I was born.”

Trixie makes a noise like a small dog whose tail has been stepped on. She’s gazing at a coin in her hand with a rapt look. After a moment, she holds it up. The “Indian” on the front of the buffalo nickel has been reworked into a cowboy.

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle, I’d forgot clean about that,” Malachi says, taking it from her for a closer look. “Fella he met out by the mailbox was hungry, he traded it to Nick for bread and some leftover chicken.”

Trixie’s eyes are brimming with tears. Jupe knows why. “Malachi, if it’s okay with your uncle, I’d like first dibs on purchasing that nickel,” he says smoothly. “We used to know a man who carved nickels as a hobby. It might even be the same man…we know he traveled a lot in his youth and wound up in Rocky Beach until he passed.”

“I reckon anything more than a nickel would be fair. Nick said use my best judgement. You two have worked like beavers, you ought to get something to show for it.” He sets the coin next to Trixie on the table.

“Anything else?” Jupe asks .

Trixie hastily wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of dirt across the bridge of her freckled nose. She gropes in the bottom of the milk can.

It yields a well-worn catcher’s mitt. A drawstring canvas pouch of marbles cradled in its palm also holds Nick’s class ring. A wooden cigar box has a stack of baseball cards that Jupiter fairly crows over. 

“Malachi, I promise you, your uncle’s going to be able to have a really nice funeral…many years from now, one hopes. These are a gold mine all by themselves!”

“There’s something else, but I can’t quite get a grip on it without standing on my head,” Trixie reports. 

Yielding the camera to her, Jupe gets the honor of emptying the final items at the bottom of the hoard, wrapped in old dish towels. He sets them on the table before Malachi.

“Mama wondered where all her good towels went to.” Malachi unwraps several flat blocks embossed with pictures like old negatives. “And these! Our grand-daddy ran a newspaper in town from 1915 til he retired in 1953. The paper folded in the eighties. These are photographic plates of things that ran in the paper.” 

“Did your grand-dad build the farm?” Trixie asks as Jupe arranges the vintage memorabilia on the table. 

“No, it was Grand-daddy’s brother, he came here in the boom times, the Twenties. The family story was, he came out here to see how his kid brother was doing as a publisher--he’d been away from home for ten years by then and his parents wanted his brother to check up on him. Uncle Toby got a good deal on the spread while he was here and settled down. He’s the one who put in the orchard. A couple other brothers came out from west Texas and mostly all their kids grew up together out here, though Mee-maw and Grand-daddy kept a house in town. One of the cousins is in there these days.” 

Jupe has the phone in one hand and is gingerly unwrapping the plates. “Events from the Twenties through the Fifties!” he exclaims. “Big stuff!”

“Babe Ruth retires!” Malachi brightens. “That’s got to be worth something!”

“Your Grandfather had a talent for preserving history,” Jupe agrees. “Let me look into it. There might even be museums interested.”

“Museums want donations,” Trixie says bluntly. “But maybe the other stuff will be worth enough that you could donate those.”

“Grand-daddy loved putting that paper out,” Malachi rubs his finger across the ornate typeface. “Retiring was what killed him, but after Mee-maw passed, well, he just kind of ran down. That, and Johnny buying it in Europe.. Grand-daddy passed a couple years after Vietnam was over. By then, we knew Nick wasn’t coming back. He sent a card, said he was back in the States, but he didn’t want to come back here.”

“PTSD,” Jupe says quietly. “Maybe survivor’s guilt. War is rotten.”

“As true now as it was then,” the old man agrees. “I watch the news. These days, we’ve got veterans camping out on the streets of L.A., along with a host of other poor souls.” 

“That’s a lot of stuff to get appraised,” Jupe notes. “And I get the impression the need for cash is somewhat urgent?”

“Nick ain’t sick, that I know of…he’s just a-coming up on his threescore years and ten and that’s all the Bible promises any man,” Malachi points out, stroking the cover of the old Bible. “It would be sacrilege to sell a Bible…probably not much of a market for ‘em these days. But the rest of it? Long as he gets his thousand, I imagine he’ll be real pleased.”

“I can give you some upfront money,” Jupe suggests. “That way, you can pass it on to your brother, and once we start selling off things, we’ll make sure we get you caught up. I don’t think two thousand dollars would be an unreasonable sum.”

Trixie chokes delicately. She knows how much money is in the household account--but she knows Jupe, too--if he says it’s worth money, it’ll be worth _a lot_ of money!

“Take it with you,” Malachi gestures at the pile of artifacts strewn across the old farmhouse table. “Well except for the comics and the Bible!” He smiles at the bright cover of _Korak, Son of Tarzan_. “Unless you think these funny books are important?”

“Possibly, but let's deal with the coins and cards first. I can come out tomorrow with a cashier’s check,” Jupe says. “It’s safer than cash.” 

“I’ll give Nick a call a little later and ask what he wants to do. He might say send it by Western Union. I’ll let you know.”

“Sounds like a plan.“

They gather up the ‘treasure’, carefully rewrapping the printing plates so they aren’t damaged. Trixie pockets the carved nickel with one last fond smile. Jupiter has the jar of coins--the bills are staying with Malachi--and the baseball cards.

“It’s kind of sad,” Trixie says as they’re driving back toward Rocky Beach. “All those things buried for so many years…in those days, Nick was just a few years younger than we are, and now he’s an old man.”

“’When I became a man, I put away childish things’,” Jupe quotes ponderously. “And now, those long-buried treasures are going to help him in his old age.”

“What do you think we’ll be doing in fifty years?” she asks, trying to imagine it.

Jupe smiles. He knows enough about history to realize how different today’s world is from 1970. Things he and Trixie take for granted--the internet, smart phones to name a couple--were pure science-fiction in young Nick’s day. In a half-century, what technological wonders will their grandchildren accept as commonplace?

“I don’t know, sweetie,” he tells her, “but I hope we’re still doing it together.”

..

**Author's Note:**

> This was probably for a prompt, which I didn't bookmark--my bad! I started treasure-hunting with our favorite mystery-solvers a few months ago and got busy with other things, so it's been languishing. I was prowling around my hard drive and found went "Hey! I should finish this!" and wrapped it up. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
